Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Please read up to page 25 for a shorter paper. Knowledge and Moral Relativism Ángel Pinillos 1. Introduction I wish to argue for the thesis that many moral statements can vary in truth-value depending on the moral standards at issue—a thesis that clearly counts as a type of moral relativism.1 It is challenging to argue for moral relativism because many of us do not want the thesis to be true. 2 As T.M. Scanlon points out, ‘for some, relativism provokes passionate denial, the passion and haste of these denials suggesting a kind of fear’.3 Some fear may be appropriate. Whatever your moral views may be, relativism seems to add legitimacy to moral positions you find false, odious and even dangerous. Although ultimately, moral relativism may have these and other discomforting consequences, we should (of course) be careful to distinguish our fear of moral relativism from good arguments against the view or reliable intuitions that the view is false. Nonetheless, I 1

Moral relativism, as I define it, can be understood in a variety of ways from the perspective of semantic theory. Here are two of them. First, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, for instance, could be understood on the model of indexicals where a sentence containing these terms can express different propositions depending on the moral standards invoked in the context of utterance. Second, it could be understood as invoking relative truth. That is, a proposition concerning morality can vary in truth-value depending on which moral standard is invoked in the circumstance of evaluation. In accordance with these two models, the expression ‘statement’ in the definition of moral relativism should be interpreted as ‘sentence’ if we adopt the first model just described but as ‘proposition’ if we adopt the second model. See the semantic appendix for more details: https://sites.google.com/site/napinillos/home 2 There aren’t very many relativists among Anglo-American philosophers. In a recent survey of professional philosophers in the English speaking world, only 27% report to lean or accept moral anti-realism: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl . Moral relativists form a small subset of this group. Some recent philosophers who have defended some version of the view include Brogaard (2008), Dreier (1990), Harman (1975,1996), Kölbel, Prinz (2007), and Wong (2006). Harman also endorses agent relativism which is not the type of relativism I will be defending. But he also seems to endorse “critic” relativism which is the type I will be defending (1996 pg 62-63). 3 Scanlon (1998 Pg.328) 1

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism think some of the negative knee-jerk reaction towards relativism may be an overreaction. First, plenty of absolutist moral views also have extremely unpalatable consequences, but many of these positions do not seem to engender the same degree of fear. Second, relativism need not be wild and unconstrained. Relativists need not accept that every moral statement has a truth-value that varies across standards. Third, the position may have some attractive consequences. David Wong, for example, argues that the position leads to greater tolerance for others.4 And fourth, relativists need not be seen as aiming to debunk morality. In fact, the relativist may be motivated to defend their theory because they think that relativism is true and that morality is too important for us to be misguided about it. For example, the relativist may hold that there is great value in resolving moral disagreements, but she will think that in some cases (though certainly not all) attempts to resolve a dispute by trying to discover the objective truth of the matter will either be futile or lead to a false resolution. Following this general perspective, the approach I take in this paper takes morality and our ordinary moral practices seriously. In particular, I urge that we should accept (a) many of the academic scholars who devote their lives arguing for moral claims are genuine experts about those moral claims, and (b) many non-experts in morality really do know many of the moral beliefs that guide their lives even if those beliefs happen to be rejected by some of these experts. Although (a) and (b) seem innocent enough and hardly reflect a dismissive attitude towards morality, the main argument in this paper is that they lead to moral relativism. So even if moral relativism is not something we want to be true, it is not clear that when presented with our options, we would rather give up (a) or (b).

4

Wong (2006). 2

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism This paper has two major components. First, I describe a new puzzle concerning the possibility of moral knowledge in light of expert disagreement. The puzzle reveals that anti-skepticism about morality can best be respected by adopting moral relativism. Second, I develop a notion of a moral standard that incorporates recent developments in moral psychology, including work in Moral Foundations theory carried out by Jonathan Haidt and collaborators. 5 An attractive feature of my account lies in how these two parts fit together. The connection I draw between psychological features (moral standards) and semantics will allow us to see how the puzzle I develop in the first part can be solved. 2. In Favor of Relativism: A Puzzle About Non-Experts Disagreeing with Experts. It is difficult to discuss moral relativism without bringing up the fact that reflective, intelligent and well-informed agents often arrive at conflicting moral conclusions. According to the classic Argument from Disagreement (or Argument from Relativity), the meta-ethical view which can best account for this phenomenon will invoke some form of anti-realism about morality. In rough outline, if it turns out there are no absolute moral facts that settle who is right and who is wrong in a dispute, then we should not expect convergence on moral issues.6 A related and shaper argument due to Sarah McGrath (2007), concludes that if moral realism is true then moral skepticism is true (which is an unattractive result for realists). McGrath’s argument draws from the recent literature on peer disagreement. I will hold off discussing her argument until after I present mine.

5

Graham et al. 2009, ms; Haidt & Graham (2007, 2009); Haidt & Joseph (2004, 2007) Ayer 1952; Blackburn 1985; Doris and Plakias 2008; Gowans 2000 introduction; Hare 1963; Harman and Thomson 1996; Loeb 1998; Mackie 1977; Stevenson 1963; Tersman 2006; Williams 1986; Wong (1984, 2006). 6

3

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism I argue that moral relativism is the best explanation to a puzzle that I develop and so this gives us some good reason to accept the thesis. The puzzle goes like this. We start out with the plausible idea that moral skepticism is false. That is, ordinary people (nonexperts in ethics) today know many garden variety statements concerning morality. We then note that for these garden variety statements, there are experts about those statements who currently reject them. And here is the problem. It is plausible to hold that if an expert rejects a statement in their area of expertise (at time t),7 then non-experts in the same community do not know that statement to be true (at time t). So it looks like people don’t know a great deal of garden variety moral claims. Hence moral skepticism is true, contrary to our initial assumption. I state the puzzle below in a more precise way. But before I do that I want to make some preliminary remarks about ethical expertise. We need to distinguish moral experts (in the more or less ordinary sense of that expression) from experts concerning the truth of certain moral statements (or class of moral statements). A moral expert in the first sense is someone we would reach out for advice on difficult moral matters of a personal nature. But an expert concerning the truth of certain statements need not be an expert in the first sense. I think, for example, that if you are a well-respected philosopher who writes a book in a reputable press defending the idea that capital punishment is immoral, then you are probably an expert on the truth of the statement ‘Capital punishment is morally wrong’, but you might not necessarily be a good person to get advice from concerning personal issues of a moral nature (even if they concern capital

7

I will clarify below that the rejection has to be a product of the expert’s competence as an expert. 4

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism punishment). Although philosophers who discuss the notion of moral expertise very often focus on the first notion, I want to talk exclusively about the second notion. A point of clarification: I do not want to say that every philosophy professor that defends an ethics statement P in a journal or in a book is necessarily an expert on statements similar to P. It is not difficult to come up with possible counter-examples to this generalization. For the purposes of the puzzle, all we need is that we accept that certain philosophers I cite below will count as experts concerning the sorts of statements they have defended in print. I should also mention something about what I mean by a non-expert in ethics. I want the group of non-experts to include people who have not thought very much about any type of ethics statement. I want to include people who have thought a lot less about ethics statements than many ethics professors. For example, an undergraduate student whose major exposure to ethics boils down to the one or two ethics courses will count as a non-expert in my sense. I expect that most people in our community will count as nonexperts in ethics. The puzzle then does not require us to have provided necessary or sufficient conditions for expertise. We just need to agree about some people that they are experts and about a great many others that they are non-experts. Now here’s the puzzle. (1), (2) and (3) each are highly intuitive but they form an inconsistent triad. (1) Moral Skepticism is false: Non-experts in ethics know a lot of garden variety moral statements. (2) For just about every garden variety moral statement, there is some expert in that type of ethics statement that rejects it.

5

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism (3) If an expert concerning a garden variety moral statement rejects it (at time t),8 then non-experts in ethics do not know that statement (at time t).

We must give up either (1), (2), or (3). But these three claims have great plausibility. This is the puzzle. Let me now clarify each of these (1-3) and say something on their behalf. 2.1 Clarification and support for (1): By a garden variety moral statement, I mean something specific and I mean something that must be relativized to a community. I will take these statements to be of one of two types: ‘verdictive and innocent’ and ‘hot topic’. A verdictive moral statement is one that corresponds to an all-things-considered moral judgment that is about a particular action (Shafer-Landau 2003 pg. 268). Those statements won’t, in general, concern abstract or theoretical claims. Innocent moral statements correspond to commonly held beliefs, and beliefs that people in the relevant community don’t take to be very controversial. These notions are imprecise, but this should not have a great impact on the puzzle. We just need to focus on an interesting subclass of verdictive and innocent claims. Examples of this subclass include actions which concern allocating resources to improve some lives to a small degree, but such that they could have been used to improve the lives of others (who are much worse off) to a much greater degree. Examples include: ‘it is morally acceptable to take my parents out for an expensive dinner on their anniversary’, ‘It is morally acceptable to enjoy a two-week holiday with the family staying in a nice hotel and eating at good restaurants’ and ‘it is morally acceptable to sit at home all weekend and do 8

I clarify below that the rejection must be a product of the expert’s competence as an expert. 6

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism nothing but watch television ’. It is not hard to come up with other examples like this. They concern a great number of our everyday actions. I now discuss ‘Hot topic’ statements. These will concern politically charged issues of the day. In the United States, they concern moral beliefs about the following: abortion, affirmative action, animals, capital punishment, euthanasia, immigration, pornography, privacy, the environment, and famine relief. Many ordinary people accept hot topic statements, but unlike innocent statements, people are, in general, aware that there is no widespread agreement about them. Here are two illustrations of (1) which reveal its plausibility. Many of us would selfattribute knowledge of hot topic statements. Ask yourself if you know that abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action etc. are (not) morally acceptable. I think many readers of this paper, having probably reflected on many moral issues, would say they know these things. Now think back on when you first formed these beliefs. It probably happened at a time when you could not qualify as an ethics expert—say when you were in college. I think you might very well say now that you knew back then--and perhaps since then, that abortion is (not) morally acceptable, for example. This is an illustration of non-experts having knowledge of hot topic statements, and hence another illustration of (1). It is important to be clear that when it comes to hot topic statements, (1) does not say that people on both sides of the debate possess knowledge (this would already presuppose some type of relativism). The claim only requires that defenders of one side of the debate who are non-experts possess knowledge. Here’s another example. Imagine Jones, an intelligent person of modest means who does not often think about ethics. Jones has recently run into some money so he is finally

7

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism in a position to do something nice for his parents, who have struggled financially all their lives (but they still manage to have the basics). Now suppose that Jones asserts the following with great confidence: ‘I know it is not morally wrong to buy this vacation for my parents (It is the least I could do for them)’. It is very intuitive to grant Jones his claim. This knowledge is non-expert knowledge of a verdictive and innocent statement. It is an example of (1) at work. Other examples like this can be easily constructed.9 I think there is a big cost to denying (1). If we say that ordinary people fail to know the garden variety statements, then very few of their actual beliefs about morality will amount to knowledge. So by denying (1), we adopt a species of moral skepticism. Like other types of skepticism, it is difficult to give a decisive argument against it. I just gave some illustrations that reveal that the position is not very natural. I will leave it at that. 2.2 Clarification and support for (2): Take any garden variety statement. It is likely that some expert on the topic will reject it. Let us consider verdictive and innocent beliefs first. The type of expert that is relevant

9

To say that it is intuitive to grant Jones his claim is not to say that all philosophers would agree that his claim is true (as we will see, a few consequentialists would deny this). It is simply to point to a piece of data. Even if you think that Jones’ claim is false, it must be granted that there is a strong pull to say that it is true and there is a cost to saying that its false. This is all that is required for the construction of the puzzle. There is no further requirement that all statements in a puzzle actually be true (unless we require the existence of true contradictions). The same point may apply to error theorists and some expressivists who may also deny Jones’ claim. The fact that they have their own preferred solutions to the puzzle does not count against the idea that there is a puzzle. Nonetheless, some consequentialists may develop their own version of the puzzle. They might imagine a non-expert reading Peter Singer’s writings in college, for example, and forming the belief that they are morally required to sacrifice a lot to help starving children in far away places. If the intuition is that the college student knows this (despite the fact that many experts disagree) then the puzzle is regained (since many experts disagree with Singer, for example). Furthermore, the puzzle may still be compelling for these consequentialists since they may agree that many hot topic statements are known by non-experts. 8

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism here is the researcher who adopts a demanding non-common sense morality usually associated with a demanding consequentialism. Peter Singer, Peter Unger and Shelly Kagan are good examples. They hold that people are morally required to make great efforts to help those who are suffering the most, even if it means making great changes to one’s current lifestyle.10 In Singer’s (1999) own words: ‘That’s right…I’m saying that you shouldn’t buy that new car, take that cruise, redecorate the house or get that expensive new suit. After all, a $1,000 suit could save three children’s lives.’ And it is not just about money. Consider watching TV shows for a few hours or lounging around all weekend. That time could have been spent aiding those who really could use your help or helping spread the word about world poverty. Hence, for a great many verdictive and innocent moral statements, there is some expert who rejects it. This should not be surprising. Many consequentialists are quite open in their rejection of common sense morality.11 Let us now consider hot-topic statements. On a recent anthology ‘Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics’, philosophy professors debate both sides of hot topics in ethics.12 These include every single one of the ones listed above. Similar publications are not hard to find. Hence, for any statement and corresponding belief an ordinary person might posses about these hot topics, there is some expert who rejects it. In sum, I have given some reason to think that for many garden variety claims that ordinary people hold, there are experts who reject them. There is reason to think then that (2) is true. It is worth pointing out that to reject (2) is to make a very specific claim about 10

See, for example, Peter Singer 2009, Peter Unger 1996, and Shelly Kagan 1999. Consider Peter Unger’s (1996) arguments against preservationist and in favor of liberationist moral theories. 12 Cohen and Wellman 2005. 11

9

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism particular people in our community. One must hold that Peter Singer and other ethicists, for example, are not experts about the statements that they have spent a great deal of their lives investigating. This is hard to believe. 2.3 Clarification and Support for (3). (3) follows from the following principle which I believe has great plausibility:

Expert Knowledge Principle (EKP): If an expert about P in a community rejects P (at time t), then non-experts (about P) in that community do not know P (at t).

Consider an expert (in a certain community) about some statement P. If they reject P, and they are in a much better position to judge P than non-experts, then how could a nonexpert know P? Furthermore, there is a sense in which it is the expert’s role in the community to determine whether P. Hence, it does not seem possible that while the expert genuinely rejects P, non-experts in the community could very well go on knowing P at the same time. EKP captures these ideas. Here are some qualifications. We need to require that the expert’s rejection of P be a product of her competence as an expert. In general, the rejection should be sincere and have survived scrutiny from herself and her peers. Experts make correctable errors all the time. But an expert should retract her rejection if it can’t survive criticism from herself or her peers. (If an agent fails to retract under those conditions, then they should no longer count as experts on the issue at hand or their judgment is not a product of their competence as an expert.) So talk of rejection in EKP and in (3) must meet the requirement that the rejection be a product of her expertise in the way just indicated.

10

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Now, it is also important that the agents in question be living at the same time and in the same community: Experts used to believe a lot of things that we now know are false and it may be that non-experts can know things that experts outside of their communities reject. We can imagine a community in a far away galaxy where their experts believe things we know to be false. There may very well be a deep explanation for why EKP is plausible. This explanation may invoke an epistemic “division of labor” or the social nature of knowledge. For example, Gilbert Harman (1968, 172-173) writes that there is a ‘…social aspect of knowledge. The evidence that a person has is not always all the evidence relevant to whether he knows’. Similarly, John Pollock (1986, 192-193) claims that whether a person knows might depend on whether she is “socially expected” to be aware of certain defeaters. Although, I am very sympathetic to these ideas, I do not want to incorporate them here.13 The important thing for us is that EKP seems plausible taken on its own. Furthermore, we should be open to the notion that there is no deeper or more fundamental principle that can explain EKP.14 15

13

Kevin Meeker (2004) follows through on Pollock’s ideas in some detail. John Hawthorne pointed out to me that EKP allows that someone who first enters a community may lose knowledge they previously had, just in virtue of now being in a community where an expert disagrees with her. I do not find this implausible. But we must keep in mind that it is also possible that the person may be deemed an expert in the new community. In such a case, EKP does not predict that her knowledge will be lost. 15 Theorists have discussed the issue of whether the existence of misleading evidence destroys knowledge; Harman 1973; Lycan 1977; Ginet 1980. My argument does not directly engage with that general question. At best, an expert’s rejection of a non-expert’s true belief (at a time and when they belong to the same community) can be seen as a special type of misleading evidence. I point out, however, that an expert’s insincere rejection of a belief may still count as misleading evidence, but it will not count as a genuine rejection on my account. Similarly, if a theorist dogmatically rejects P, this may count as misleading evidence against P; but this rejection also won’t count as a genuine rejection on my account. EKP is silent about these cases. Thanks to Stew Cohen here. 14

11

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Here is an example of EKP at work. In 1997, the Physicist John Preskill placed a bet with Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne concerning the solution to the black hole information paradox. 16 Here is then a clear case where an expert (John Preskill) rejects a claim P (which Thorne and Hawking accept). Suppose a non-expert, like a typical philosophy major with a side interest in physics, comes to agree with Hawking (perhaps because he is a big fan of his popular books and he has considered some of the reasons offered), we would not want to say that the non-expert’s belief here amounts to knowledge (even if correct).17 It does not seem right to hold that while one of the famous physicists fails to know some complicated physics fact, someone who has taken one or two physics classes and has not thought that much about the issue, will know that fact. Here’s another example. Philosophers disagree about whether contextualism about knowledge is true. Suppose a non-expert taking philosophy for the first time reads one of the articles in support of the theory and comes to believe that contextualism is true. This belief wouldn’t amount to knowledge, even if true. Suppose we experts heard such a student proclaim ‘I know contextualism is true’ after class. I think many of us would feel uneasy about this even if we accepted contextualism. Part of the uneasiness might come from thinking that what the student said is false. It is tempting to think there are counterexamples to EKP. Sometimes an expert will reject a claim that a non-expert has witnessed to be true. For example, an expert might have a belief about what happened the last minutes of a plane crash (the plane banked to the left) although a witness knows otherwise. In this case, however, we should count the

16

http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/info_bet.html It turns out that in 2004, Stephen Hawking conceded the bet. Thorne, however, remained unconvinced. 17

12

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism witness as an expert about the plane crash (an expert about the statement that the plane banked to the left). Here’s a similar case. Suppose you travel back in time 500 years ago. There will be “science” experts back then who disagree with what you know about science—yet you still have knowledge despite expert disagreement. I do not think this is a counter-example to EKP, however, because you should count as a science expert in the community from 500 years ago even if you do not count as one here and now. I want to now discuss two cases which will sharpen EKP. I dub these ‘racist scientist’ and ‘outlier scientist’. In the racist scientist case, we suppose there is a scientist that has impeccable reasoning skills and is really good at gathering evidence. But he is a racist, so he will help himself to empirical premises concerning groups of people grounded in racists ideas. Suppose that on the basis of the racist generalization R plus the legitimate evidence E he rejects P (where P is true). Can a non-expert know P? There are a number of different options available here depending on how we fill in the details. I think they are all compatible to EKP. First, we may want to say that the judgment the scientist makes is not a product of his competence as an expert. The case is analogous to a situation in which a scientist (who is otherwise skilled at what he does) also accepts premises based on astrology. On this line of reasoning, EKP does not predict that the judgment of the racist scientist destroys non-expert knowledge. However, let us consider a community in which all the scientists are racists and their rejection of P is based on legitimate evidence E, a (false) racist generalization R, and good inferences. Since expertise is taken to be relative to a community, perhaps we should say that their rejection of P is, after all, a result of their competence as experts. An analogy can help again. Consider a community that is so much in the grips of some

13

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism superstition that it filters into all their scientific judgments. Competency in their community might make room for that superstition. Now, I think that in the case at hand, we should say that non-experts do not know P. The result is not counter-intuitive when we note that the rejection of P was also arrived at by way of legitimate evidence E and complex reasoning. If the non-expert has no access to all of that, then it leaves room to say that they do not know P. And this is not counter-intuitive. On the other hand, if a person has access to E, can reason well, and is not in the grips of racism, then they might know P after all. This is not a counter-example of EKP since this person might count as an expert after all, although no one would recognize him as such. So we see that there are a variety of ways of dealing with ‘racist scientist’ which are compatible with EKP. I should note to end this section that what these examples highlight is the special responsibility that experts bear in a community. Their judgments, even if racist, have the power of making non-expert (non-racist) knowledge difficult to achieve. Now, I want to talk about the ‘outlier scientist’ case. Here, every scientist except for one endorses P. There is a single expert who rejects P. It seems, however, that nonexperts can reason this way: 99% of scientists say P, therefore P. They can even gain knowledge this way. I think this reasoning is acceptable, but it suggests something about the lone dissenter. Recall that I said that for EKP to be applicable, the rejection of P must have survived scrutiny of their peers. In this case, we are tempted to say that the dissenter must have not properly appreciated the reasons against his view. If this is right, then EKP does not rule out non-expert knowledge. But suppose that the dissenter has properly appreciated the opposing views and still thinks his view is correct (as a result of his competency as an expert) then I think this weakens our intuition that the non-expert really

14

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism knows P. For now it looks like P is a really difficult question for people in the community and the non-expert cannot know it just by going on what most scientists in the community say. This concludes the exposition of the puzzle. (1-3) are very plausible, but they cannot be all true. Before I say how moral relativism can help solve the puzzle I want to briefly discuss two possible solutions. The first is an objection to (2) and the other to (3). 2.4 Objection to (2): Ethicists are not experts. Objection: Philosophers (ethicists) are not experts about the garden variety statements. Hence, (2) is false. Bernard Williams 1995, for example, points out that if a philosopher teaching a class wrote on the blackboard some moral conclusion she endorsed, it would not be appropriate for a student to accept it as true if she did not follow the reasoning. Contrast this with a case of a theorem written down by a mathematician, a genuine expert. In that case, it would be appropriate for a student to accept it as true even if she did not quite follow the proof. So it doesn’t look like philosophers are experts about the garden variety claims. More generally, we may point to the well-recognized idea that moral deference seems problematic. We may want to conclude from this that academics, despite external appearances, are not experts of the relevant type.18 Response: Although a full response to this sort of worry would go beyond the scope of this paper, we can say enough to create some resistance to this sort of objection. First, we should reiterate the distinction between ethics expert as advisor and ethics expert about the truth of certain statements. We are only concerned with the latter here. Second, note that mathematics is an unusual case. Consider a psychology graduate (or advanced 18

See, for example, McGrath (2009), McNaughton (1988), Blackburn (1993), Gibbard (1990) and Schneewind (2001). 15

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism undergraduate) seminar. The instructor may write on the board certain positions she endorses about the architecture of the mind, for example. The positions may still be controversial and it would not be appropriate for students simply to accept the claims as true (without looking at the evidence). Yet, this is completely consistent with the instructor being an expert in psychology. Other examples are not hard to find. Deference to the claims professors make is problematic in metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy and other subfields of philosophy. Yet we do not want to say that there are no experts in these areas. I believe that many professors who teach ethics are experts on the garden variety moral claims. First, they publish papers endorsing claims that directly or indirectly concern garden variety claims. Second, these papers are peer-reviewed which means their work has undergone careful scrutiny. Third, professional ethicists often receive a PhD, the highest educational training possible. In many cases, the dissertation topics concern applied ethics. Fourth, many professional ethicists sit on medical boards where they are charged with advising on difficult moral questions. Finally, and more importantly, philosophers are very familiar with the sorts of reasons and evidence that weigh in favor and against the various verdictive and innocent statements (from the dispute concerning utilitarianism) as well as the hot topic statements (Judith Thomson’s work on the ethics of abortion is a good example of this) in a way that non-experts simply are not. They are also aware of various fine distinctions (doing vs. allowing, for example) which are helpful in better understanding the issues. These considerations very much favor the idea that philosophers are more reliable ascertainers of ethical truth than others who do not have training in ethics. Hence, they support the idea that many philosophers are among

16

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism the ethics experts in our community. It is fair to say then that this should be the default position. The burden of proof is on the other side to show that the academic philosophers discussed are not experts about the statements they have spent much of their lives defending. I will end this section with a quote from Peter Singer (1972a pg 117) which reflects the general idea: ‘Given a readiness to tackle moral issues, and to look at the relevant facts, it would be surprising if moral philosophers were not, in general, better suited to arrive at the right, or soundly based, moral conclusions than non-philosophers. Indeed, if this were not the case, one might wonder whether moral philosophy was worthwhile’. 2.5 Objection to (3): Contextualism about knowledge Objection: According to contextualism about knowledge, knowledge-attributing sentences can vary in content depending on the epistemic standards at play in the context of attribution. A sentence of the form ‘A knows P’ might be true in low standards but false in high standards. Given this machinery, we might avert the skeptical conclusion. At most, (1) is only false in high standards. The idea here is that when an expert disagrees with a non-expert, the non-expert only fails to have high standards knowledge. But the non-expert could still have low standards knowledge. This is a natural strategy since contextualism about knowledge is motivated by its potential to solve other skeptical paradoxes.19 Response: I do not see that contextualism can help here. If there is low standards knowledge despite expert disagreement in ethics then we should expect the same for 19

See, for example. Cohen 1986, DeRose 1992, Lewis 1996,. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong 2006 defends a view about epistemic justification of moral claims in which statements concerning justification include a comparison to a given contrast class. If we add some other assumptions, the view could be turned into a contextualist thesis (about knowledge) 17

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism fields outside of ethics. But I think we will not find this. If scientists disagree (at time t) about the heart benefits of alcohol, for example, then we should not expect utterances of ‘I know alcohol is good for the heart’, as uttered (at time t) by non-experts to express a truth. This is so even if the utterance was made in very casual and plausibly lowstandards settings. I conclude from this that expert disagreement precludes even low standards knowledge. Hence the contextualist solution we are considering does not seem promising. 2.6 Solution I claim that the best explanation of the puzzle should invoke moral relativism and I take this to be a good reason to accept the thesis. So this is the proposed solution to the puzzle: When a non-expert accepts a garden variety moral statement that an expert disagrees with, then it may be that the garden variety statement is true with respect to the nonexpert’s moral standards but false with respect to the moral standard of the expert.20 This leaves room to say that the expert and the non-expert both possess knowledge. Hence, I reject premise (3) in the puzzle. More generally, I think that EKP fails to hold when the discourse in question is relativistic. Here are some examples that I believe may work like the moral case. Food critics, some of them highly touted, will claim things like: ‘the marinara sauce at restaurant X is delicious’. Maybe I tried this restaurant’s sauce and found it not delicious. I am no food expert, yet I feel quite confident that I know the sauce is not delicious. That is why I will feel confident in saying things like ‘that sauce is terrible’. Learning about the expert who 20

A well-known and important issue for the relativist is how to account for moral disagreement. Some (Kölbel 2004) have claimed that relativists can solve this problem by appealing to the notion of relative truth. On the other hand, Dreier (2009) is less optimistic about that approach. I do not address this issue here. 18

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism disagrees with me does not change my position. But how can this be? According to EKP, expert disagreement should destroy non-expert knowledge in this case. One solution adopts relativism about what counts as delicious. What I said and what the critic said are both true and we may both even know that our respective claims are true. It is just that our claims must be relativized to our own tastes. EKP then is false in this domain. Here’s another example. Although I am no film expert, there are many movies that I consider to be good. Yet, there are always experts (film critics) who disagree with my judgment. Despite this, I feel quite certain that I know some movies are good. I think it would be a mistake to deny knowledge of this type to ordinary people. For example, Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian said of the film Dancer in the Dark that it was “…one of the worst films, one of the worst artworks and perhaps one of the worst things in the history of the world.”21 I thought that the movie was good and so did a lot of other people. But Bradshaw is a film critic expert and I am not. Yet, it seems that I know the film was good. A reasonable thing to say here is that we are both right but right relative to our standards. Again, relativism about film criticism is promising here as a way to avoid aesthetic skepticism. Of course, this is no place to seriously argue for relativism in certain areas of aesthetics or gustatory taste. Yet, suggestive parallels can be drawn. I now look at another case where our approach can be applied. This one concerns physics. Following Gilbert Harman 1996, it will be useful to compare the relativity of morality with the relativity some physical magnitudes. According to modern physics, there is no such thing as the absolute temporal or spatial distance between two events. Such distances must always be taken to be relative to a physical frame of

21

(guardian.co.uk). Retrieved 2009-05-22. 19

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism reference. Now consider a related “disagreement with experts” puzzle applied to physical measurements. Imagine a world like ours except that the theory of relativity is not known by anyone. Now, suppose that non-experts about physics measure the time between two football games (using ordinary but still reliable clocks) and report that it was over two hours. Suppose further that there are “measurement” experts (perhaps using extremely precise and reliable clocks) on a different frame of reference who also measure the time between the two football games, but get a reading that says the time was less than two hours. Here, we have what seems like a disagreement between the expert and the nonexpert. Yet, from our perspective (knowing modern physics) we do not want to say that this disagreement destroys knowledge for the non-expert. They still know that the time between the two football games is over two hours (that is why they correctly predicted they could get all those things done between the two games). The solution here, like in the previous cases, says that both participants know--it is just that their beliefs must be relativized to the appropriate frames of reference.22 I bring up the cases of movie and food critics as well as the physics case to make the following point: the solution I am offering to our puzzle, far from being ad hoc, is natural and can generalize to other domains. EKP is false for relativistic discourse. This undercuts the support for (3). I propose that (3) is false. So let us take stock of how far we have come. I have developed a puzzle and have argued that moral relativism is a promising and attractive way to solve the puzzle. Furthermore, we get to preserve moral anti-skepticism, that academics are genuine moral experts and also that EKP is true when restricted to absolutist discourse. But the 22

For a discussion on the semantic issues surrounding the relativity of time and space see Pinillos (forthcoming). 20

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism argument from disagreement with experts is not complete. I have to give some reason to think that moral relativism gives us the best solution. This will require arguing for two things. First, I have to give evidence that the competitors to moral relativism will have difficulties solving the puzzle. Second, I need to give more details about the theory. It is only through filling out the picture in suitable detail that we will be able to judge whether we really have the best account. The second point will have to wait until later, but right now I can say something about how the competing views fare with respect to the puzzle. It is likely that error theory in ethics and non-cognitivist views which further deny that moral claims can be true will have a difficult time accounting for moral knowledge and hence vindicating (1). This is because of the factivity of knowledge: ‘X knows that P’ entails ‘P is true’. Similarly, moral absolutists who say that when the non-expert disagrees with the expert at least one must be wrong will also have a hard time solving this puzzle. Recall that (1), (2) and (3) are jointly inconsistent. I have argued for (1) and (2). I gave an argument for (3) which relies on comparing ethics to other areas of philosophy (epistemology) and science. These are areas where an absolutist perspective is highly plausible. I eventually settled on (3) being false on account of moral relativism. Hence the argument that I gave for (3) above (including the responses to the objections) can plausibly be interpreted as concluding that (3) is true if absolutism is the case. I conclude then that absolutism as well as error theory and non-cognitivism will have difficulty giving an adequate solution to the puzzle. 2.7 Comparison to McGrath’s argument. I want to discuss Sarah McGrath’s 2007 recently developed puzzle for moral realists which borrows from the recent “peer disagreement” literature in epistemology (except

21

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism hers directly concerns knowledge). This interesting puzzle is couched as an argument that if moral realism is true, then moral skepticism is true.23 The first premise is that there are very many CONTROVERSIAL moral beliefs. A CONTROVERSIAL belief had by X is one that some other person Y denies and X has no more reason to think that Y rather than X is making an error. The second premise is that if a belief is CONTROVERSIAL (and there is awareness of this) then the belief does not amount to knowledge. The conclusion is that all those CONTROVERSIAL moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge. One important difference between our approaches is that I am directly arguing for moral relativism while she is developing a puzzle for realists. A second important difference is that on her view, experts like Peter Singer and others may very well possess CONTROVERSIAL moral beliefs (since experts disagree with each other). But if this is right, then even they will fail to know according to McGrath’s argument. This seems counter-intuitive. My argument is silent on expert knowledge. In fact, according to my positive account, many experts do possess the relevant knowledge. A third difference is that in the case where an expert is insincere about their rejection of a claim, the non-expert’s belief of that claim may count as CONTROVERSIAL. Hence, their belief will not count as knowledge. In my view, however, insincere “rejections” do not count as genuine rejections (as I explain in section 2.3). Hence my argument does not predict loss of knowledge in this case. A fourth difference is that McGrath intends her argument to only apply to cases in which the agents in question are aware that there is disagreement from an epistemic peer. In my argument, there is no “awareness” requirement. The mere existence of expert 23

For our purposes, we can take “moral realism” here to entail that there are genuine moral truths and that moral relativism is false. 22

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism disagreement (at the same time and in the same community) is sufficient to rule out nonexpert knowledge. I should point out a contrast between the arguments McGrath and I have presented and the recent epistemology literature on peer disagreement.24 The issue in that literature is whether and to what extent one can rationally hold a belief in the face of peer disagreement. There are many differences between that work and this project. One main difference is that the literature does not (in general) directly address knowledge. I focus on knowledge (more specifically moral knowledge) because the concept is very natural, and as a result, we often have strong direct intuitions about the concept. The intuitions, I believe, are powerful enough to drive the puzzle. It is plausible, I think, that one’s confidence in the various knowledge claims used to support the puzzle should be greater than the confidence in the highly theoretical judgment that moral relativism is false. 2.8 Over-generation I have given a puzzle about moral knowledge and said the best solution invokes moral relativism. The argument I gave does not over-generate to the same degree as the classic argument from disagreement. As many theorists have pointed out, one problem with that argument is that we can’t quite go from observing disagreement in a certain area of discourse to relativism (or error theory) about that topic. In contrast, in my argument, there is expert disagreement about whether abstract objects exist, but there is no problem denying non-experts knowledge about whether abstract objects exist. So my argument does not say that we should be relativists about the existence of abstract object—there is no over-generation here. But sometimes philosophers develop extreme views on a certain

24

For a sample, see: Elga (2007), Christensen (2007), Feldman (2007), and Kelly (2009). 23

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism topics outside of morality. For example, Trenton Merricks 2001 is a metaphysical nihilist who thinks ordinary statements about composite objects are false (‘there are coffee cups’). A possible objection to my argument is that if we accept the conclusion of my argument about morality, then we should accept a parallel conclusion about metaphysics on account of Merricks’ expert judgments: we should adopt relativism about existence or object-hood. But this is implausible, so my argument is no good (so goes the objection). Before we get to the main response to this argument, I want to note that it is not wildly implausible to think that sentences like ‘there are coffee cups’ are relativistic in the intended sense. If we look at Merrick’s behavior we see him denying that sentence in the philosophy classroom. But he would still accept it outside the classroom. Given that Merricks is rational and a competent speaker of the language, we should take this as evidence that the sentence can be used in two different ways yielding different truthvalues. This is in turn some evidence for the relativistic claim. So the thesis is not wildly implausible. Furthermore, those who think that metaphysical disputes are verbal disputes (Hirsch 2005) count as relativists about these issues. So the position should not seem outlandish. Now let us look at another way of resisting the present objection. First, note that my argument is an argument to the best explanation. It claims that moral relativism is the best explanation to the puzzle. The objection we are considering says that if we accept that moral relativism is the best solution to the moral puzzle, then relativism about existence is also the best solution to an analogous puzzle concerning existence. But from what we have said so far, there is no good reason yet to accept this conditional. Not all types of “relativisms” are on a par. In the next sections I give more details about the

24

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism theory of moral relativism. The details about the accompanying moral psychology and semantics, for example, will make it plausible to think that moral relativism is the best solution to the puzzle. One would need to look at the details of existence or objecthood relativism to determine if it is really the best solution to the analogous puzzle. Without being given these details, we may not be warranted in accepting the analogous argument for existence relativism. Of course, philosophers might come up with other possible cases of over-generation which may create trouble for my view. I cannot anticipate all of them here. They would need to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps in some instances, relativism is the right way to go.

3. Moral Standards Moral relativism says that moral claims can vary in truth-value depending on the moral standard at issue. We now need to develop further the notion of a moral standard. A full discussion here is not possible. But I hope enough may be said to give us a guiding idea. A relativistic theory of moral standards should not only give us the resources to solve the puzzle from the previous section but it should also help explain the observed diversity in moral perspective. Explaining diversity requires two things. First, the notion of a moral standard should be descriptively adequate. By this I mean that variability among standards should correspond to known variability in moral practices. Second, moral standards should be psychologically real. By this I mean that it should be possible to give an account of how humans can acquire or possess such standards. This is an important point since there might be accounts of standards which are descriptively

25

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism adequate, yet hard to see how humans can possess such standards. We might also have in mind other desiderata. James Dreier (1990), for example, proposes that moral standards account for moral motivation. Gilbert Harman (1996) wants standards to be the product of implicit agreements (hence their authority). Furthermore, along with David Wong (1984, 2006) and Jesse Prinz (2007), these authors endorse a naturalistic approach to morality. My approach is not in conflict with these other ideas. In the case of David Wong, I follow him in endorsing a plurality of values as the discussion below will reveal. In accordance with the two main constraints mentioned above, I propose we turn to some recent work on moral psychology. Jonathan Haidt and collaborators have argued for the existence of five basic moral values that are thought to provide the psychological foundations for human morality.25 Here’s a description of this research: To find the best candidate foundations Haidt and Joseph (2004) surveyed lists of virtues from many cultures and eras, along with taxonomies of morality from anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary theories about human and primate sociality. They looked for matches—cases of virtues or other moral concerns found widely (though not necessarily universally) across cultures for which there were plausible and published evolutionary explanations of related psychological mechanisms. (Graham et al 2008 pg 4)

25

Much of the following all-too-brief discussion is gotten from Graham et al. 2009, ms; Haidt & Graham 2007, 2009; and Haidt & Joseph 2004, 2007. Details can be found through these citations. 26

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Evidence from a variety of sources, some of which I will discuss below, point to the idea that five basic values form the “building blocks” of morality. 26 These are listed below accompanied, for illustration, with characteristic moral judgments: 27

(i)

Harm/care: You ought to save someone from drowning even if it is somewhat inconvenient for you. You must have compassion for those that are suffering. You should not cause someone pain for your amusement.

(ii)

Fairness/reciprocity: If you do me a great favor and later you find yourself in need, I should make an effort to help you (even if there is nothing in it for me). People should not cut in line, it is not fair to others. In the fight against terrorism we should still not treat people unfairly.

(iii)

In group/loyalty: It is permissible to give your son a job even if there is a better qualified applicant. It is good to be patriotic. I would not turn my brother in to the police even if I knew he was guilty.

(iv)

Authority/respect: I should obey my superiors even at great cost to me. We should try very hard to respect and preserve the traditions of the country. Children should not talk back to their parents even if the parents are wrong.

(v)

Purity/sanctity: It is wrong to engage in incest or bestiality even if it leads to no psychological or physical harm. People should not have cosmetic plastic surgery. We should try not to commit “unnatural” acts.

Now, before we get to how the foundations can help us construct a notion of a moral standard I want to make two preliminary points. First, I reiterate that these values reflect

26

I depart from Haidt in claiming that the foundations correspond to things people value. Jonathan Haidt and his collaborators instead like to speak of the foundations as corresponding to virtues (Haidt and Bjorklund 2008). For the purposes of this paper, this should not make much of a difference. Furthermore, Haidt’s foundation theory should be distinguished from his social intuitionistic model of moral psychology (Haidt and Bjorklund 2008). In this paper, I do not endorse the latter, which is a more nuanced view about the role of reason and intuitive or affectively laden inclinations in moral psychology. 27 Some of these sentences are adapted from Graham et al. 2009. 27

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism psychological categories and are not to be understood as providing conceptual foundations for morality. Consider an analogy. If you think that judgments about the external world are produced by psychological processes that invoke the five senses, you are not thereby committed to the idea that propositions about the external world get a conceptual reduction into concepts concerning the five senses. We do not want to confuse psychology with semantics or conceptual analysis.28 Second, the list is a work in progress. No doubt the theory will undergo revisions. For example, theorists have proposed adding values associated with wisdom and also waste (not wasting resources even if it doesn’t harm anyone).29 Nonetheless, I think that there is good reason to think that the project is on the right track. Now I said above that we need a notion of moral standards that is faithful to the observed diversity in moral views (descriptive adequacy). A major finding in recent work is that moral differences across cultures can correspond to differences in the degrees to which a person exhibits each of the five values. Thus, we may see the five foundations as building blocks of an individual’s moral standards. For example, empirical research shows that American liberals and conservatives (on social issues) tend to differ in that the latter value ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity much higher than do the individuals in the former group.30 Finer distinctions can be drawn. Research shows that having an elevated Purity/Sanctity value is a good predictor of favoring restrictive laws on abortion. Also, having an elevated Authority/Respect value is a good predictor of

28

Having said this, I do argue that the five foundations of morality are semantically relevant in that they play a role in moral standards. But this requires argument. It does not come for free and it is not Haidt’s view (as he presents it). 29 For more proposals, see http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php?t=challenges 30 See especially Haidt and Joseph (2004, 2007), Haidt and Graham (2007, 2009) 28

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism being in favor of stricter laws against immigrants.31 These and related results then point to the idea that variations within the five foundations can explain diversity. Accordingly, I propose that a moral standard will be constituted by, among other things, the five foundations with each foundation given a certain weight.32 There is reason to think that this notion of moral standards can capture moral diversity and hence be descriptively adequate. I also mentioned that the notion of a moral standard should be psychologically real. That is, it should be plausible to see how humans can possess such standards. This requirement can also be fulfilled by appealing to the foundations. First, each foundation has an adaptive explanation. In some cases, their precursors can be found on non-human mammals.33 Let us consider one example. Brosnan and de Wal (2006) give evidence that capuchin monkeys respond in a negative way when they see a conspecific get a better reward for doing the same task they are doing. The researchers conclude that these primates exhibit an evolutionarily early form of unfairness aversion and hence of the fairness/justice value. Second, the degree to which a person possesses a value is a measurable feature. Haidt, Graham and collaborators have devised the “Moral Foundations Questionnaire” which measures the degree to which a person possesses the five values. The scale has been shown to be reliable using a variety of methods.34 Third, it has been shown that how one fares on the psychometric scale for values has real

31

Graham et al (MS) There may be natural constraints on possible weights. For example, all people seem to score relatively high on the first two foundations. 33 Haidt and Joseph (2004 2007) 34 Graham et al (MS), 32

29

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism predictive value concerning a variety of moral issues.35 These three points support the notion that a notion of moral standards based on the five foundations is psychologically real. That is, the fact that the foundations have adaptive explanations, can be measured and have predictive power is good evidence that there is a robust sense in which these values (in varying degrees) can be possessed by humans. In this section I have argued that we should understand moral standards to be constituted by, among other things, the five foundations together with a weighting for each foundation. The advantages of proceeding this way is that the notion has the potential to explain the observed diversity in moral perspective (in the sense that the notion is both descriptively adequate and psychologically real). In the next section, we will incorporate this notion in a semantic theory. Doing so will allows us to make specific predictions concerning the semantic property of speech acts. 4. Semantics We started off with a puzzle that threatens to vindicate moral skepticism. According to my version of moral relativism (which aims to refute moral skepticism), it has to be the case that non-experts know the garden variety claims. Factivity of knowledge requires that what they know be true. Hence, my view is that opposing moral positions concerning hot topic statements can all be true relative to different moral standards. Similarly, the verdictive and innocent statements are all true relative to ordinary people’s moral standards. And since it is not plausible that those people know while the experts fail to know, it is likely that Peter Singer’s views (for example) are true relative to his standards. A theory of moral standards must yield these results if moral relativism has a chance of

35

Graham et al. (2009), Haidt & Graham (2007). 30

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism solving the puzzle. We will see now how the theory developed in the previous sections can help us accomplish this task. The discussion below will no doubt be very much incomplete. I do not want to pretend that we can get a good handle here and now on the debate about consequentialism and about hot topic statements. My goal is much more modest. I just want to provide a picture of how the notion of moral standards I developed may be used to solve the puzzle. I also want to give some examples at the sort of evidence that may be relevant if we are to give a satisfying relativistic solution to the puzzle. According to our account of moral standards, differences between liberal and conservative views on hot topic issues correlate with differences in moral standards. Liberals will score much higher in the first two foundations (Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity) than in the others (Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect and Purity/sanctity). Conservatives, on the other hand, score more or less evenly on all five foundations (and more or less the same on the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity dimensions as many liberals). Let us call the type of moral standards with the first type of moral foundation LIB. Let us call the second type of moral standard CON. We should then say, as a first approximation, that some conservative hot topic statements are true relative to CON, but false relative to LIB. Of course, we would ultimately like to have finer distinctions than CON and LIB (I mentioned above that finer distinctions can be made which make particular predictions about people’s views on specific issues). But our hypothesis works as a first approximation. I now turn to verdictive and innocent claims. Peter Singer has famously argued that people reasonably well-off by first world standards are morally required to sacrifice a

31

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism great deal of income and time to aid famine relief in far away countries. From this perspective, it may be wrong to spend on luxury items, expensive dinners or presents for friends when one could be helping starving people. That is, verdictive and innocent claims would be false. We saw from the development of the puzzle that many people in our culture accept the verdictive and innocent claims. Appealing to our theory of moral standards, we might consider two hypotheses about this. First, it might be thought that those people score lower on the harm/care foundation than the demanding consequentialists. Those people simply care less than the demanding consequentialists. Second, we should consider the possibility that both groups score the same in the harm/care foundation, but they differ in how they score in the ingroup/loyalty foundation. Demanding consequentialists might be more prone to accept some strong principle of impartiality. Such a principle would give equal consideration to people that are from far away countries or cultures (all else being equal). That principle might be highly intuitive and perhaps considered obvious by some consequentialists, but not considered obvious by others.36 The people that score high on ingroup/loyalty might think that morality requires helping others from their own country and culture before helping people in foreign lands (even if the latter are suffering more). These are two competing hypothesis about the standards that give rise to the disagreement between the folk and the demanding

36

There is a large body of literature in ethics discussing various notions of impartiality. There is disagreement as to whether and to what extent some such principle should be accepted. As Troy Jollimore (2006) points out: ‘there is no doubt that consequentialism is a deeply impartial theory…[but] the impartial demands of consequentialism are so strict and so extreme that some critics have found them unacceptable: consequentialism, they claim, simply demands too much and must therefore be rejected.” 32

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism consequentialists. We can empirically test to see which is on the right track by having the relevant participants take the moral foundations test. Let us explore the second possibility a bit further. I am considering the hypothesis that difference in scores for the ingroup/loyalty foundation, but not differences in the harm/care foundation can account for (in some cases) the different attitudes towards helping starving people in far away cultures. Now, since conservatives have an elevated ingroup/loyalty value compared to liberals (but roughly the same harm/care score), we should expect (according to the hypothesis) liberal communities to contribute more to far away places. In particular, we should find relatively more foreign aid among nations that lean towards the left. There is data that is strongly suggestive of this idea. It is well known that leftist leaning nations like Denmark, Sweden and Norway notoriously give much more as percentage of GDP than conservative nations like United States and Japan. A number of studies by political scientists corroborate this idea. For example, a quantitative study by Therién and Noël 2000 (pg. 154) reveals that ‘Leftist cumulative power has a positive effect on foreign aid, through the influence of socialist attributes and social spending’. (The study focuses on ‘cumulative’ power since it takes time for policies to have an effect). Similarly, David Lumsdaine in his study (1993, pg 163) concludes ‘Parties with strong socialist or domestic redistributive concerns…strengthened aid while in power, while conservative governments tend to retrench.’ Thus, I think that the (relative) reluctance of some conservatives to help those in far away places might be attributable to a relatively high weighing of the

33

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism ingroup/loyalty value.37 And it is not attributable to them scoring lower in the harm/care foundation. This discussion suggests that we should take seriously the possibility that conservatives resist the demanding consequentialist conclusion (denying many innocent and veredictive statements) because their moral standards value ingroup/loyalty to a relatively high degree. Moving to semantics then, the statement ‘It is morally acceptable to take my friends out to an expensive dinner instead of helping the poor in far away places’ may be true relative to CON but false relative to the standards invoked by the demanding consequentialist (who presumably scores relatively low on the ingroup/loyalty dimension). So far in this section I have explored a way that a moral relativist can get the result that relative to the standards of some non-experts, some hot topic statements and some verdictive and innocent statements could be true. This then leaves room to say that non-experts have the requisite knowledge and hence can help us solve the moral puzzle (see the appendix for semantic details on knowledge claims). It is worth highlighting that I could have simply stipulated a notion of moral standard that gives the results to accommodate the solution to the puzzle. I did not do that. Instead, I pointed to independently motivated psychologically real feature of humans (Haidt’s foundations theory), and indicated how observed variability within this feature match-up with the variability in beliefs concerning the garden variety statements from the

37

There is no prediction being made here that conservatives will endorse more aid for needy members of their own country (compared to liberals). What I said is compatible with conservatives drawing the ingroup/loyalty boundary line to exclude people outside their families or local communities (for example). Thanks to Andy Khoury and Steven Reynolds here. 34

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism moral puzzle I developed. It could have been that there is no such match. The fact that the theory presented here coheres well with independently observed data, adds to its plausibility. I have now made a move from psychology to semantics. I argued that by adopting moral relativism and incorporating Haidt’s foundations theory into a theory of moral standards and semantics, we can solve the moral puzzle. Furthermore, the fact that the notion of a moral standard is independently motivated adds plausibility to the account. There are a lot of semantic details to be filled in. For example, we have to choose between contextualist treatments and various versions of the relative truth model. These decisions are important since, among other things, they will impact how we think of disagreement. Due to space limitations, I cannot address these issues here.38 5. Conclusion I have raised some new considerations in favor of moral relativism. I introduced a puzzle about moral knowledge and argued that the best solution invokes moral relativism. I also sketched a theory of moral standards that incorporates some recent work in moral psychology and has the benefit of helping us further understand the puzzle. I believe that the theory that emerges not only gives us an attractive solution to the puzzle, but has some plausibility when considered on its own.39

38

For a good discussion about these issues see Dreier (2009). I would like to thank the following people for helpful comments: Brad Armendt, Elizabeth Barnes, Tom Blackson, Ross Cameron, Cheshire Calhoun, Stew Cohen, Peter de Marneffe, Andy Egan, Andy Khoury, Bernard Kobes, Gerald Marsh, Joan McGregor, Cecilea Mun, G. Shyam Nair, John Hawthorne, Joe Hedger, Steven Reynolds, and Ted Sider. I also want to thank members at a Pacific APA symposium (2010) where parts of this paper were presented as well as members of a seminar I gave at ASU in the spring of 2010. 39

35

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism

Bibliography Ayer, J.L. 1952. Language, Truth and Logic. Dover. Berkeley, George. 1710. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Blackburn, S. 1985. ‘Error and The Phenomenology of Value’ in Ethics and Objectivity, ed. T. Honderich, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Henley. Brink, D. 1989. Moral Realism and The Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge University Press. Brogaard, B. 2008. “Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism”. The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 58 , No. 232. Brosnan, Sarah F. and Frans B.M. de Waal. (2003). ‘Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay’. Nature 425, 297-299 Christensen, D. 2007. “Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News”, Philosophical Review 119: 187-217. Cohen A. and Wellman C. 2005. Eds. Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics. WileyBlackwell. Cohen, S., 1986, “Knowledge and Context”, The Journal of Philosophy, 83: 574-583 Cohen, S. 1999. “Contextualism, Skepticism and the Structure of Reasons.” Philosophical Perspectives 13. DeRose, K. 1992, “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52(4): 913-929 DeRose, K. 1995, “Solving the Skeptical Problem”, The Philosophical Review, 104(1), 152 Doris, J. M. and Plakias, A. (2008) “How to Argue about Disagreement: Evaluative Diversity and Moral Realism.” In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), The Psychology and Biology of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Dreier, James. 1990. Internalism and Speaker Relativism. Ethics, Vol. 101, No. 1. pp. 626.

36

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Dreier, James. 2006. “Moral Relativism and Moral Nihilism”, in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, David Copp (ed.), Oxford University Press, 240–264. Dreier, James. 2009. “Relativism (and Expressivism) and the Problem of Disagreement”. Philosophical Perspectives. 23 Ethics. Dretske, F. 1970, "Epistemic Operators," Journal of Philosophy 67: 1007-1023 Elga, Adam 2007. Reflection and Disagreement. Nous 41. 478-502 Enoch, D. 2009. “How is Disagreement a Problem for Moral Realism?” The Journal of Ethics 13 (2009), 15-50 Feldman, R. 2006. “Epistemological Puzzles About Disagreement”, in Epistemology Futures, ed. S. Hetherington. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 216-236. Ginet, C. (1980) ‘‘Knowing Less by Knowing More’’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy. 5: 151 – 62. Gowans, C. 2000. Moral Disagreements: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Christopher W. Gowans, ed., London: Routledge. Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (MS) “Mapping the Moral Domain.” Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. (2009). Liberals and conservatives use different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029-1046 Haidt, J., & Bjorklund, F. (2008). Social intuitionists answer six questions about moral psychology. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.), Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20, 98-116 Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2009). Planet of the Durkheimians, Where Community, Authority, and Sacredness are Foundations of Morality. In J. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification. Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues. Daedalus, pp. 55-66, Special issue on human nature Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2007). The moral mind: How 5 sets of innate moral intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. In P.

37

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich (Eds.) The Innate Mind, Vol. 3. New York: Oxford, pp. 367-391. Haidt, J., Koller, S., & Dias, M. (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 613-628 Hare, R.M. (1963). Freedom and Reason. Oxford University Press. Harman, G. 1968. ‘Knowledge, Inference and Explanation’ American Philosophical Quarterly. Harman, G. 1973. Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harman, Gilbert. 1975. “Moral Relativism Defended”. Philosophical Review. 84 Harman, Gilbert. 1985, "Is There a Single True Morality?" in Morality, Reason, and Truth, D. Copp and D. Zimmerman, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman Harman G. 2000. Explaining Value. Oxford University Press. Harman G. and Thomson, J.J. 1996. Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity. WileyBlackwell. Hawthorne, J. 2006. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford University Press. Hawthorne, J and Stanley J. 2008. Journal of Philosophy 105 (10):571-90. Hirsch, Eli 2005. Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70: 67-97 Jollimore, Troy. “Impartiality”. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Kagan, Shelly. 1999. The Limits of Morality, New York: Oxford University Press. Kamm, F. 1999. “Famine Ethics: The Problem of Distance in Morality and Singer’s Ethical Theory”. in Singer and his Critics. Blackwell. Kelly, T. 2009. Peer Disagreement and Higher Order Evidence. In Warfield and Feldman (eds) Disagreement Oxford University Press. Kölbel, Max. 2004. Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12: 297–313 Lewis, D. 1996, “Elusive Knowledge”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(4): 549567

38

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism Loeb, D. 1998 “Moral Realism and the Argument from Disagreement.” Philosophical Studies 90: 281-303 Lumsdaine, David H. 1993. Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime 1949-1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lycan, W. 1977 ‘‘Evidence one does not possess’’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 55: 114 – 26 MacFarlane (2005a). 'Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions'.,in Oxford Studies in Epistemology 1, Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne (eds.) Oxford University Press. Mackie, J.L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin Books. McGinn, C. 1999. ‘Our Duties to Animals and the Poor’ in Singer and his Critics. Blackwell. McGrath, Sarah. 2007. "Moral Disagreement and Moral Expertise", Shafer-Landau, ed. Oxford Studies in Metaethics v.4: 87-107 McGrath, Sarah. (Forthcoming) "Skepticism about Moral Expertise as a Puzzle for Moral Realism", Journal of Philosophy. Meeker, Kevin. 2004. ‘Justification and the Social Nature of Knowledge’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol LXIX No. 1 Merricks, T. 2001. Objects and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Moore, G.E., 1903, Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinillos, N. Ángel. (forthcoming). “Time Dilation, Context and Relative Truth” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Pollock, J. 1986. Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. Rowman and Littlefield. Portmore, D. (forthcoming). Common Sense Consequentialism. Prinz, Jesse J. 2007. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford University Press. Scanlon, T.M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1998) Shafer-Landau, R. 2003. Moral Realism: A Defense. Oxford University Press. Sider, T. (ms) “Against Parthood” 39

Pinillos, Knowledge and Moral Relativism

Singer, P. 1972 "Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs. 229243. Singer, P. 1972a “Moral Experts”. Analysis 32:4 Singer, Peter 1999. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” in The New York Times on the Web (September 5, 1999) Singer, Peter. 2009. The Life You can Save. Random House: New York. Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. 2006. Moral Skepticisims. Oxford University Press. Stalnaker, R. 1978. ‘Assertion’. Syntax and Semantics, 9 , 315-332. Stevenson, C. 1963. Facts and Values. Yale University Press. Tersman, F. 2006. Moral Disagreement. Cambridge University Press. Thérien Jean-Philippe and Noël Alain. 2000. “Political Parties and Foreign Aid.” The American Political Science Review. Thomson, J.J., 1997, "The Right and the Good", Journal of Philosophy, 94, 273-298 Unger, Peter. 1996. Living High and Letting Die. Oxford University Press. Williams, B. 1986. Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy. Harvard University Press. Williams B. 1995. “Who Needs Ethical Knowledge?” in Making Sense of Humanity . Cambridge University Press. Williamson, T. 2002. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford University Press. Wong, D.B. 1984, Moral Relativity, Berkeley CA: University of California Press Wong, D. B. 2006. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism, Oxford University Press.

40